Conventional park brakes in vehicles usually include a pair of disk or drum brakes at the rear wheels of the vehicle, a mechanical actuating member such as a manually operated lever or a park brake pedal, and a brake cable connecting the brakes with the actuating member.
More sophisticated vehicles have an electric drive that actuates the park brake in response to a manually operated electric switch that can be mounted in the vehicle's dash board. A park brake typically requires high actuation forces above 1000 N. Generating sufficiently high actuation forces with an electric drive normally requires the use of heavy and bulky electric motors and entails high consumption of electric power.